3-14 is (was) π day: meet the Raspberry Pi 3B+

March 14, 2018 | 12:32

3-14 is (was) π day: meet the Raspberry Pi 3B+

The Raspberry Pi Foundation hast launched the latest version of their oh so popular minicomputer, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The day chosen for this introduction can't be accidental, as March 14 is written as 3/14 in US date notation, and today marks the 30th anniversary of pi-day.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched the latest version of their oh so popular minicomputer, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The day chosen for this introduction can't be accidental, as March 14 is written as 3/14 (also 3-14) in US date notation, and the marks the 30th anniversary of Pi Day. (more interesting facts: Albert Einstein was born on March 14, like my brother-in-law, and Steven Hawking died today).

The new RPi 3B+ is more powerful than the previous model thanks to its upgraded Broadcom SoC, the 64-bit BCM2837B0 which features better power management allowing it to be run at a higher speed of up to 1.4 GHz.

Communication speeds are higher too due to a chip from Cypress, the CYW43455 5G Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11n/ac MAC/Baseband/Radio with Integrated Bluetooth (the RPi 3B+ specs mention BLE4.2). This mouthful means that the 3B+ has dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) and more than doubles the data throughput compared to the RPi 3B.